Featuring works by Luise Adolpha Le Beau and Robert Schumann
Program:
Luise Adolpha Le Beau – Piano Quartet in F minor, Op. 28
Robert Schumann – Piano Quartet in E-flat major, Op. 47
The years Robert Schumann spent in Leipzig from 1840 to 1844 were among the most productive and happiest of his life. The year 1842 is considered his “year of chamber music”: he composed the three string quartets, Op. 41, the piano quintet, Op. 44, and finally his only completed piano quartet, Op. 47 —a work full of introspection and dreamy melancholy, in which the strings and piano blend into an organic, unified sound. At its heart is the Andante movement, which begins with one of the most beautiful cello themes of the Romantic era. At the premiere in 1844 at the Gewandhaus, Clara Schumann performed the piano part—the very same celebrated pianist with whom the young and highly talented pianist and composer Luise Adolpha Le Beau would take piano lessons nearly 30 years later. After just 12 piano lessons, however, the relationship between the two women became so strained by feelings of rivalry and competition that Le Beau discontinued her lessons. In 1883, Le Beau composed her Piano Quartet, Op. 28—a work that exemplifies the grand form on a small scale: cyclical connections shape the musical unity of the work across its four movements.
